


i think i always knew

by luckycharmdust



Category: America's Suitehearts - Fall Out Boy (Music Video), Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (Comics)
Genre: Anger, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:42:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28709115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckycharmdust/pseuds/luckycharmdust
Summary: A Sandkid hurt/comfort fic based on the lines “I’ll take care of you” “It’s rotten work” ”Not to me. Not if it’s you.”I know the tag says fall out boy but this IS NOT rpf
Relationships: Kobra Kid/Mr. Sandman (Fall Out Boy)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	i think i always knew

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for anger and a breakdown. I think this fic could be triggering for some readers, so proceed with caution.  
> I wrote this way too late at night in the middle of a depressive episode so this is me protecting onto Kobra Kid... again.

Kobra felt his chest rattle unevenly as he took a heavy breath, the anger and tears and all the emotion that he didn’t know what to do with bottled up and threatening to explode. Like one of Ghoul’s bombs, except ten times more fiery and with five times more shrapnel that was guaranteed to hit every other member of the Fabulous Killjoys straight in the heart.

He braced his hands on the edges of the sink and let the blood match the red stains on the porcelain from Poison’s hair dye. It was fitting, he thought. Poison had made a statement with their dye, branding them as fiery and rash and angry and everything that Poison wasn’t.

Because Poison had taken the color red from Kobra. Party Poison’s real color was yellow; something fitting that anyone who actually met Poison could see. They weren’t the angry killjoy. They were outgoing and flirtatious and… as impossible as it seemed, they were fucking happy.

Something that Kobra was not. Something that Kobra didn’t think he could ever be, as he looked hard at the space on the wall where the mirror used to be, imagining what he would see in the reflection. His knuckles were bloody from the broken glass but he gripped the sink so tightly that they turned white. The person that Kobra saw reflected in his mind was him, and Kobra couldn’t deny it because it was so painfully obvious. Kobra had anger in his eyes and he could see that now, see the overwhelming emotion that years on the Better Living Pills hadn’t managed to suppress, that after all the racing, fast enough that the Phoenix Witch herself warned him to slow down, he hadn’t managed to outrun. All his anger had bubbled up inside him, screaming and thrashing for a release, and Kobra had thrown his fist into the bathroom mirror at the diner.

Poison and Jet were standing in the doorway, surprise thinly veiled on both their faces. And if Kobra looked close enough, he could see what he thought was fear. His crew was afraid of him, and he couldn’t blame them because they had reason to be. Kobra was angry, but more than that, he was an ex-Crow. An ex-fucking-Scarecrow. Kobra knew how to kill and he knew how to get away with it. He was trained in the ways of torture, in the ways of inciting fear into his enemies, in the ways of every type of combat you could think of. Kobra knew how to take down someone with a single punch. Hell, he knew how to shatter the entire bathroom mirror with a single punch.

So Poison and Jet had reason to be afraid of him. Kobra’s Crow training painfully showed when he got like this - so angry that his reasoning shuts off and fighting is the only rational solution in his mind. Ghoul had already stormed off, after shouting at Kobra for Destroya knows how long. Xe had a temper that could hold a flame to Kobra’s.

Kobra didn’t remember what the two of them were fighting about. 

That’s a lie. He did, no matter how hard he wished he didn’t.

Because Kobra had fucked up and pulled a knife on Ghoul. It was out of instinct, out of fear for his own life even if he had no reason, but Ghoul couldn’t understand that. Xe was desert-born and raised with a distrust for any type of Batter City law enforcement, and that included Kobra. It didn’t matter to xem that Kobra was off the pills, it didn’t matter to xem that Kobra had been a killjoy for almost five years now and that his Scarecrow days were far behind him, because Ghoul protected xir crew with all xir heart and mind and body, and that meant that getting xem to trust you was harder than a successful supply run to the heart of Bat City.

So of course Ghoul didn’t trust Kobra. And when a clap earlier that day had gone a bit Costa Rica, and Kobra had pulled a knife on Ghoul thinking that xe was a drac, xe had blamed him for it. Xir words had run on a loop over and over in Kobra’s head, getting louder and louder, until they had run their fist into the mirror. “You’re a Scarecrow, Kobra. How do we know you weren’t working with that patrol? How do we know you aren’t trying to sell us out for a couple of carbons? We can’t, and that’s the bottom line.”

Kobra took another deep, shuddering breath, and cursed Destroya that the diner didn’t have working plumbing. He needed to wash the blood off his knuckles.

“Kobra, I need you to-” Poison started, but Kobra didn’t hear the rest of their sentence as he pushed past them through the doorway, accidentally knocking Jet’s shoulder on the way out. He would’ve apologized, but maybe he wasn’t really sorry. Kobra was never sorry, and maybe that made him an asshole, but the rest of the crew knew what they were getting into when they chose to run with him.

Poison and Jet’s voices faded into the background of Kobra’s head as he broke into a run out of the diner, slowing down only briefly to grab his biker gloves so that he didn’t have to look at his bloody knuckles anymore, a reminder of what he had just done. A reminder that he broke things, that’s all he did. That’s all he was good for.

Kobra left his helmet on the sand as he mounted his motorbike and hit the gas. He could convince you that he needed to feel the wind in his hair right now, that he needed to feel alive. And maybe that would be half true, but maybe Kobra was just self-destructive. He watched his speedometer climbed past 100 mph through the sand that was kicking up into his eyes. Kobra told himself that was the reason his eyes were watering; that they were irritated by the sand, and not because he was crying. The Kobra Kid didn’t cry, at least not when anyone could see him.

He didn’t think he knew where he was going, but perhaps he always did. Because it wasn’t a coincidence when he showed up at the Suiteheart’s base, a small shack on the edge of Zone 1 that doubled as a lookout post for the Underground, hoping - no, praying - that Sandman would be the one on watch that night. Kobra didn’t know what he would do if someone else opened the door. Maybe run away, maybe hit them, maybe act like everything was okay and make up some lame excuse for why he was there in the dead of night.

Luckily, Kobra didn’t have to find out. Because it was Sandman who opened the door, with their black leather jacket and gloves that were all too familiar to Kobra, even though he claimed he didn’t get attached to other killjoys.

“Kid?” he asked, voice heavy with worry and Kobra hated that he was the one who caused it but right now he couldn’t bring himself to care. Instead, he fell forward into Sandman’s already outstretched arms with a whimper as all the anger left him, evaporated like rain on hot sand, and left him empty.

“Sandy,” Kobra pleaded. His voice was muffled as he buried his face in Sandman’s chest and wrapped his arms tight around his waist. “I’m sorry, Sandy, I’m so sorry.” Kobra didn’t know what he was apologizing for, because as already mentioned, Kobra didn’t apologize. But right now, in Sandman’s arms, he allowed himself to be vulnerable. Just this once.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Sandman said, but he knew as well as Kobra did that there were a lot of things that needed apologizing. Kobra wasn’t perfect by any means; far from it, actually. He was fucked up and flawed, and Sandman knew that.

Kobra muttered something unintelligible into the folds of Sandman’s jacket, hiding a secret confession where he knew no one would ever find it.

“Look at me, please. I want to make sure you’re alright.” Sandman took Kobra’s face in both of his gloved hands and tried to meet his eyes, but Kobra kept them cast downwards.

“Please don’t,” he whispered in a voice that sounded broken, in a voice so absent of anger it sounded like a different person. Kobra obviously wasn’t alright, but Sandman let go of his face and let Kobra hide it again.

“At least come inside with me before you get frostbite. You must be freezing from the ride over.” Kobra hadn’t noticed how cold he was - he felt numb, and perhaps numb was better than being overwhelmed, but Sandman’s voice was so gentle and caring and… and genuine, that Kobra broke down.

“I’ve got you, Kobes,” Sandman muttered as he led Kobra over to the small cot in the corner of the shack. Kobra let go of him just long enough to let Sandman help him onto the cot, before pressing into him again twice as hard as before. Sandman wrapped his arms around the killjoy, shaking and crying against him, before making a promise he hoped he could keep. “I’ll take care of you.”

“It’s rotten work,” Kobra forced out through his sobs.

”Not to me. Not if it’s you.”

Kobra paused to let those seven words sink in. He turned them over in his head, examined every inch and every angle. Because Sandman was the first person to actually care about him. That wasn’t entirely true, because Poison loved him, and Jet loved him, and to some extend Ghoul did too, but Sandman had said it out loud. Sandman had taken Kobra when he was at his worst and just held him close and let him cry. Sandman didn’t try to fix Kobra like Poison did, he didn’t try to understand Kobra like Jet desperately wanted to, and he didn’t yell at Kobra for things that were out of his control like Ghoul did. And Kobra knew it wasn’t fair to point out the flaws in his crew when they were only trying to help, and he knew it wasn’t fair to Sandman to only use him when he needed comfort, but as we’ve already established Kobra was an asshole and he was okay with it, to some extent. And maybe he wasn’t just using Sandman, because at this moment he felt something else, another feeling that was stronger, but Kobra couldn’t put a name to it, and he didn't know how to tell it to Sandman. So instead, he just asked, “Can I stay here for the night?”

“Of course, Kid,” Sandman responded, and in some ways, he already knew.


End file.
